For as much as Giovanny Evanson can do on the court, he’d rather spend time after the game talking about his team.
Evanson spent much of the the first half distributing the ball to open teammates, and that opened things up for the King’s Way Christian senior to score 30 points in the Knights’ 65-45 win over rival Seton Catholic on Wednesday night.
The win clinched a share of the Trico League title for the Knights, and they locked up the No. 1 seed to the district tournament.
Oh, and Evanson notched his 1,000th career point in the process.
“That’s a special accomplishment, 1000 points,” Evanson said. “It’s good to finally get it. It’s a good team win, and I’m glad I finally got it.”
After Ryan Tyler hit a pair of 3-pointers in the first quarter, Evanson opened the second quarter with back-to-back 3-pointers to put King’s Way up 21-9.
But Seton Catholic rallied back to cut the margin to 21-17 before Jaydon Hall’s 3-pointer right before the buzzer gave the Knights a 26-17 lead heading into halftime.
“We knew it was going to be a big crowd, so one big thing was staying poised,” Evanson said. “And even though we had a nine-point lead at half, we said ‘That’s nothing. They can come back really fast. We’ve got to push the ball and be aggressive. And stay poised through all of it.’ ”
In the the second half, it was the Evanson-and-Hall show. The Knights stretched their lead to 60-34 midway through fourth quarter with all the points coming from either Evanson (20) or Hall (12). Hall would finish with 19 points in the game.
“Ryan and Jaydon came out hot,” Evanson said. “Jaydon did a great job of closing. Ryan is always staying confident in his shot. It was a really good game for both of them. A good team win for sure.”
The Knights were 4-7 after opening Trico League play with a loss at Castle Rock on Jan. 3. But since then, King’s Way (11-8, 7-2) has won seven of eight.
“After that Castle Rock game, we were all pretty bummed,” Evanson said. “First league game, losing that always hurts. After that, we had a meeting and came together, played better. We knew we had ourselves in a corner, but we had to come out.”
Included in the run was a special game in the rematch with Castle Rock on Jan. 20 — a game the Knights won 80-33.
In that game, Evanson scored a school-record 40 points with a school-record eight 3-pointers in the first half. He also added five assists, five rebounds, six steals and no turnovers.
“That’s about as perfect a game as I’ve seen a kid play,” King’s Way Christian coach Daven Harmeling said.
And now the Knights are rolling toward the postseason, even though Evanson doesn’t want to think about that yet.
“We still have one more (league) game — White Salmon” on Friday, he said. “So we can’t take that for granted. We did at Stevenson and we lost. So we just have to win Friday.”
A win would give the Knights the Trico League title outright.
“Four years in a row, we will have won our league,” Evanson said. “That’s a great accomplishment.”
KING’S WAY CHRISTIAN 65,
SETON CATHOLIC 45
SETON CATHOLIC — Tyler Tran 3, Ryker Ruelas 0, Brady Angelo 5, Rico George 8, Lance Lee 6, Breckin Miller 2, Jack Jenniges 21. Totals 17-47 (7-23) 4-6 45.
KING’S WAY CHRISTIAN — Will Bump 0, Jaydon Hall 19, Ryan Tyler 8, Giovanny Evanson 30, Isaac Pisarczyk 0, Aidan Sweeney 0, AMatthew Belefski 1, Jamison Duke 7, Dave Struthers 0. Totals 25-47 (10-21) 5-7 65.
Seton 9 8 15 13—45
King’s Way 15 11 15 24—65
